Genius Sports rolls out intelligent content platform with FanDuel Sports Network
Sports data provider Genius Sports has signed a partnership with FanDuel Sports Network to launch its intelligent content platform across NBA and WNBA broadcasts.
The system will operate during over 300 NBA games each season, as well as WNBA coverage, giving advertisers access to real-time inventory across linear, digital, and streaming environments.
Executive Vice President and Head of Advertising and Sponsorship Sales at FanDuel Sports Network, Jim Keller, said, “This partnership reinforces our commitment to delivering innovative, fan-forward experiences at scale. By pairing Genius Sports’ real-time intelligence with our network’s unmatched scale, we’re giving brands the ability to connect with fans with moments that matter most, creating more meaningful opportunities across every screen.”
The platform provides sponsorable moments based on live data, including player ID, shot probability, shot and defender distance, and heat maps. Genius Sports stated that the approach enables brands to align with specific game situations rather than static placements.
Genius Sports Executive Vice President Sean Conroy added, “Partnering with FanDuel Sports Network represents a transformative step in how brands use the power of live sports to engage audiences. Together, we’re creating the first truly unified augmented advertising network in live sports, giving brands the ability to reach fans with relevant, real-time content at the moments that matter most.”
Genius Sports has also recently partnered with Brazilian fantasy sports and betting operator Rei do Pitaco, providing the operator with access to its BetVision product, official data, and in-play trading support.
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The Backstory
How the pieces began to align
The latest move pairs a live-sports data powerhouse with a growing sports media network to make ads more dynamic inside NBA and WNBA action. The groundwork was laid over the past year as both companies stitched together rights, technology and distribution meant to blur lines between broadcasts, betting and brand messaging. FanDuel has steadily expanded its reach across platforms, while Genius Sports has been rolling out tools that inject real-time data and interactivity into live video.
That convergence has been visible in college and pro sports. FanDuel extended its footprint in regional programming by agreeing to air at least 10 Saint Louis Billikens men’s basketball games and one women’s game in the 2025–26 season, a deal that also includes streaming on the FanDuel Sports Network app and simulcasts on ESPN+ under the A-10 media pact. The university framed the arrangement as community-building exposure, while the network emphasized a local-first strategy. Read more on the Saint Louis Billikens broadcast partnership.
On the technology side, Genius Sports has been sharpening its in-game tool kit beyond U.S. football. It launched BetVision for Soccer in partnership with Infront to bring integrated streaming, real-time stats and “touch-to-bet” features across top European and South American competitions, extending a template first proven during the 2023 NFL season with major U.S. sportsbooks. Details on the soccer rollout are in Genius Sports’ BetVision for Soccer.
FanDuel’s distribution and content push
FanDuel has been broadening who sees its content and where, a prerequisite for monetizing new ad formats at scale. In August, the sports betting network VSiN struck a nationwide distribution deal with FanDuel Sports Network, bringing the weekday program VSiN By the Books to the FanDuel app and nine regional feeds. The show leans on a mix of betting analysis and local storylines to engage viewers where they follow their teams. That agreement followed Flutter’s move in July to take full control of FanDuel by acquiring Boyd Gaming’s remaining stake, giving FanDuel a clearer mandate to invest in programming and tech. See the terms in VSiN’s nationwide partnership with FanDuel.
FanDuel has also entered the national streaming arena. A tie-up with Amazon Prime Video made FanDuel the odds provider and betting content partner for NBA and WNBA coverage, integrating odds views and bet-tracking features into Prime’s basketball broadcasts. The platform’s on-air talent, including former NBA player Blake Griffin, is slated to anchor activations across social and live events. The arrangement underscores Big Tech’s willingness to fuse live sports with interactive overlays that keep viewers in-stream. More on that collaboration is in FanDuel and Amazon’s NBA and WNBA deal.
Taken together, these distribution deals create a larger canvas for the kind of augmented ad inventory that depends on both scale and precision—reaching fans across linear TV, streaming and local shoulder programming with consistent targeting.
Genius Sports’ bet on real-time interactivity
Genius Sports is methodically extending its live-data stack into commerce. BetVision’s expansion into soccer shows how the company threads live streaming with in-play wagering, using artificial intelligence to pull out player-level moments and instant betting prompts without forcing fans to leave the video feed. The same philosophy applies to sponsorship: replace static ad buys with dynamic, data-driven placements keyed to the action on the floor or pitch.
The company has also deepened its ties to the collegiate ecosystem. The NCAA extended its partnership with Genius Sports through 2032, naming the firm exclusive distributor of official college sports data to sportsbooks while reinforcing integrity services and responsible gambling initiatives. Genius will continue to support NCAA LiveStats for more than 70,000 games and apply its AI platform, GeniusIQ, to performance analytics for teams. The long horizon and exclusivity sharpen Genius Sports’ control over a critical category of U.S. sports data. Full details are in the NCAA’s extended partnership with Genius Sports.
The combined message: Genius Sports is positioning its tech not just to inform odds and coaching tools, but to power monetization across broadcasts, wagering interfaces and brand activations that trigger at specific game states.
From rights and reach to revenue
The strategy emerging across these moves is straightforward. On one side, FanDuel is aggregating audiences through national streaming tie-ins, regional carriage and college athletics broadcasts—critical to selling any advanced ad product. On the other, Genius Sports is refining a pipeline that converts live-game telemetry into sponsorable “moments,” plus in-play betting formats that keep engagement high. When stitched together, those capabilities promise advertisers improved relevance and less waste, and they offer rights holders new inventory that is elastic rather than fixed to a timeout or quarter break.
There are important guardrails. The NCAA deal foregrounds integrity and responsible gambling, which remain political flashpoints as sports betting permeates media. Exclusive data rights mean sportsbooks and media partners are likely to rely on a single source of truth for college sports, simplifying compliance but concentrating market power. For pro leagues, the adoption of data-rich overlays raises questions about competitive balance in broadcast sales and the future of legacy sponsorship assets.
Still, the commercial incentives are strong. Dynamic ad units priced on context—say, a go-ahead three-pointer in the final two minutes—can command premiums compared with static placements. And by embedding betting utilities into the same interface, both partners can reduce churn, grow session length and collect more granular performance signals to optimize inventory in real time.
What to watch next
Three threads will determine how quickly this model scales. First, distribution: FanDuel’s regional and college commitments, reinforced by the VSiN content pipeline, will test whether localized programming can deliver enough impressions to attract national brands seeking moment-based buys. The Billikens broadcasts serve as a pilot for midmarket college rights inside a betting-centric network.
Second, product performance: BetVision’s soccer rollout will show whether “touch-to-bet” and player-follow features translate beyond the NFL template. If engagement and conversion metrics hold up across Ligue 1, the Champions League and Brazil’s Série A, the case for universal adoption strengthens. The roadmap is outlined in Genius Sports’ soccer launch.
Third, premium streaming partnerships: The Prime Video partnership for NBA and WNBA is an early bellwether for how deeply interactive layers will be woven into mainstream broadcasts. Viewer tolerance, regulatory scrutiny and league comfort with branded overlays during pivotal moments will all shape the pace of expansion.
If those tests break in favor of adoption, the live-sports ad market could pivot from buying time to buying context. For leagues and networks, that means rethinking rate cards and inventory maps. For sportsbooks and data providers, it puts a premium on exclusive rights, latency, and the ability to package insights that are both actionable and brand safe in the heat of play.
